Copyright Statement

Abstract

An issue yet to be examined in the social work research literature concerns an expected
death at home and the experiences of informal carers being subjected to a police investigation
following a request for help. While research in this area is scant, sufficient
mention of unnecessary police involvement is made in the palliative care literature to
show that incidents like these have occurred throughout Australia, America, Canada
and the UK. This article examines the Australian context, analysing the practice of
reporting deaths to the police in instances where a doctor is not immediately available
to attend the home to certify the death of a person diagnosed with a terminal condition.
Personal accounts from three research participants derived from a subset of data analysed
for a larger qualitative study are used as empirical evidence to illuminate the
impact of unnecessary police involvement. Using critical social work theory to
examine unnecessary end-of-life intervention, this paper argues for greater social
work activity within the context of home-based palliative care, so that the rights of informal
carers to relevant information is improved, and expected deaths at home are no
longer considered crime scenes warranting police investigation.